By Madelyn Tullos, Online Editor-in-Chief
I find myself wondering if the womb breeds claustrophobia. Babies spend months trapped in a confined space. They kick and squirm but go unanswered. Their movement becomes reduced to proof for bystanders who place their hands on a pregnant belly just to feel something alive inside. “Aw, she’s kicking,” Grandma exclaims.“Yeah take the hint,” the baby responds inside. The fetus grows more and more and the walls begin to close in. Nine months of this torture; no wonder they come out crying.
As we grow older the spaces that hold us become harder to see but easier to accept. We are taught to stand still inside them and encouraged to make ourselves smaller to fit the mold. These spaces hold an expectation. They outline how we behave, look, and how we should be understood. Being placed in this box eliminates the questions of who we are, it’s already assumed. We leave the womb inevitably, but we don’t leave confinement behind. The walls simply change shape. It’s no longer physical barriers. Instead, these walls are made of words.
It cannot be that easy. It sounds too simple. The idea that my answers to a wide range of questions will somehow prove my personality type does not feel legit. This is a box I continue to kick and scream to be rid of. How is assigning me a number supposed to help me understand who I am? The concept of the enneagram has never meant much to me. Honestly, I hate it. I hate that it pretends to know me based on a few check marks. I hate that it convinces people they already understand me based on the number I was handed. I hate the way it turns complexity into predictability. I hate the box it tries to shove me in. It’s suffocating.
Labels are everywhere. They stalk us and attempt to claim us as their own. They will shape a person’s being if we let them. People see a category and think they understand the whole story. They act a certain way depending on the label plastered on our foreheads. Each label is another wall, another invisible cage. You start to feel like a Russian nesting doll because of the amount of boxes placed over our heads. We cannot escape labels in the society we live in today and that is a scary thing. Every decision we make categorizes us in a certain way.
My question is what happened to freedom? I will not be placed in a box. I do not reject the ideology of labels for mere detestation with their evaluation. I am not attempting to throw a fit because I am being painted in a bad light. I simply do not want to appear on the canvas in the first place. Put the paintbrush down…find a new subject.
Madelyn Tullos
Self-discovery comes in many forms and I don’t believe personality tests are the only path to true knowledge of self. The One who made us has the best understanding of each one of us. Forget scientific reasoning and psychological understanding; consider the fact that there is only One who carefully knitted every being in our mother’s wombs. I choose not to be psychoanalyzed but instead desire to be shaped into the person He wants me to be. The bible is full of numbers which carry much meaning but not once does it reference nine personality types. But it does talk about the one who left the 99. It mentions five loaves and two fish which fed thousands. It talks about the seven days of creation which produced every being that a personality test attempts to categorize in a mere nine groups.
I am a female who is a white, Christian, Republican. I’m an American citizen, twenty years old, and a junior in college at OBU. I am a member of the Women of E, editor of the Signal, and President of the Junior Class. I’m a girlfriend, a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a niece, an aunt, a friend. Each of these labels comes with assumptions, expectations, and judgments. Each one a wall, a ceiling, and a floor that confines me in ways I never agreed to. Ironically enough, I choose to label the box I refuse to be placed in as the very box that houses my biggest pet peeve.
